You should have heard that nipper say ''Arf a mo', old un!'
It was a treat.
"Then one day we got surprised. There was about a dozen of us in the
village, and two or three hundred Germans came down on us early one
morning. They got us; no help for 'it. Before we could shoot.
"Well there we were. They tied our hands behind our backs, and smacked
our faces and kicked us a bit, and we were lined up opposite the house
where I'd been staying.
"And then that poor little chap broke away from his mother, and he run
out and saw one of the Boshes, as we call them, fetch me one over the
jaw with his clenched fist. Oh dear! oh dear! he might have done it a
dozen times if only that little child hadn't seen him.
"He had a poor bit of a toy I'd bought him at the village shop; a toy
gun it was. And out he came running, as I say, Crying out something in
French like 'Bad man! bad man! don't hurt my Anglish or I shoot you';
and he pointed that gun at the German soldier. The German, he took his
bayonet, and he drove it right through the poor little chap's throat."
The soldier's face worked and twitched and twisted itself into a sort
of grin, and he sat grinding his teeth and staring at the man in the
black robe.
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